Friday, December 30, 2011

Pine Island Fishing Report: Five Tough Days

What do you get when you have a week of falling tides, a nasty cold front, and a ten degree drop in water temps? Lousy fishing!

To make matters worse, I was once again booked mostly with fly fishermen this past week and the high winds did nothing to help the situation. I actually had a day where one of my anglers got no bites whatsoever. I mean ZERO. It's happened to me a few times before but as a guide it still really hurts.

There were a few bright spots to the week, starting with the beautiful 26 inch red pictured above that local angler Dave Canton caught just an hour before the cold front hit on Tuesday morning. And there was also today at 12 noon, when the tide began flooding in Matlacha Pass and the flats north of Smokehouse Bay turned into an aquarium filled with huge trout and small redfish. It was almost a miraculous sight for my anglers after four hours of looking at empty water, and it got even better when those fish started eating. It was also the first time in four days that I could take off my jacket and feel warm again.

The waters will stay cool for a few more days but the end of next week will also bring us some fantastic morning tides. If you want to see some tailing redfish around that time just give me a call.

Welcome to the Pine Island Angler. This blog is published from my home base on beautiful Matlacha, Florida where I run my guiding business Wildfly Charters. I started this site to provide regularly updated news about salt water flats fishing throughout Southwest Florida, the Keys, and many other Stateside and Caribbean locations. As a full time guide since 1995 I'm always looking for that next undiscovered spot or secret fly that will lead me to even better fishing and I'm happy to share what I find here on this site. I welcome any of your comments on all of my posts. Feel free to contact me with any questions by e-mail at gmckee1@hotmail.com or call me directly at (239)565-2960. Capt. Gregg McKee